


In all fairness

by JWade



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Tear Rating: 2/10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-16 01:34:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13043763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JWade/pseuds/JWade
Summary: It took a while for Cas to realize why he and Dean never could manage to get any alone time. When he confronted Gabriel about his interference, his reasons threw both Cas and Sam for a loop.





	In all fairness

It had been weeks now. Weeks that Cas kept trying to get close to Dean, and Dean kept trying to get close to Cas and something always happened to interrupt them or distract them. Everyone was getting fed up. Even Sam. He’d had to watch their undisguised UST for years, and he just wanted them to get over it already. He’d hoped it would be better once they got a freaking clue, but it was even worse now since they couldn’t actually get a chance to act on it. 

It took Cas a while, but he finally figured out what was going on, so he waited until the hunters were in bed and went to the library to call his brother. “What’s up, Cassie?” Gabriel asked nonchalantly, leaning against the table. 

Cas had no idea what Gabriel meant by that question, but he didn’t particularly care at the moment. “You have been preventing Dean and I from discussing our mutual feelings,” he accused. Neither of them noticed the insomniac hunter that had been heading to the kitchen before he heard voices and detoured to listen. 

“Yup,” Gabriel replied, popping the p in his trademark manner. 

“I must ask you to cease your interference,” Cas said narrowing his eyes at his brother.

“Nope,” Gabriel said lazily. 

“Why?” Cas asked frustrated. 

“Why? You’re asking me why? You and your buddies stole any chance I might have had at a happy ending. Why the hell should you get yours?” Gabriel asked, dropping the cheerful act. 

“What are you speaking of, Gabriel?” Cas asked confused. 

“The apocalypse, of course. Do you have any idea what I had to do to Sam to try and stop it? In trying to teach him to let go of his brother so he wouldn’t drink the demon blood and go after Lilith, I had to make him hate me. Even now, I can see the barely disguised hate in his eyes. He will never forgive me for that,” Gabriel said disgustedly, but mostly with himself. 

“You are in love with Sam Winchester,” Cas said bluntly as it dawned on him. 

“Ding Ding Ding. We have a winner,” Gabriel said sarcastically, and Cas just looked at him confused. “You stole my happiness, so I’m stealing yours. It’s as simple as that. Payback’s a bitch, dear brother,” he said as he disappeared. Cas sighed heavily. He would have to think on this. See if he could find a way to get Gabriel to lay off. Now that he understood the situation a little more, he could see Gabriel’s point, as much as he disagreed with it. 

Sam, on the other hand, made his way back to bed with a dazed look on his face, midnight snack forgotten as he turned everything over in his head. That had all been about teaching him to let go. About stopping the apocalypse. Gabriel was right that Sam hated him for it. He’d always thought that he was justified in that hatred, but maybe he wasn’t. He was just so confused. 

The next morning Sam made for the library. He wanted to find a way to alert him when an archangel showed up. He wanted to hear more, and he doubted that Cas would let this go so easily. He found more than one alert spell, but they all made an audible noise that would notify everyone, or would be easily sensed by Gabriel and/or Cas. It took him most of the day to find a usable one, and thankfully they had the ingredients on hand, so it only took him a few minutes to have it up and tied into the existing wards. 

It was a few more days before he felt the tugging in his mind that meant an archangel was within the wards and he jumped out of bed and made his way quickly and silently to the library as he heard voices. “If I can get Sam to forgive you, will you leave Dean and I alone?” he heard Cas ask. 

Gabriel gave a harsh laugh. “Get him to forgive me? You’d have better luck getting the sun to stop rising. You didn’t see what I put him through Cassie. The pure anguish and defeat in his face. The despair in his eyes. It will haunt me for as long as I exist. No. He won’t forgive me. And I can’t blame him.”

“It didn’t work though,” Cas said, trying to bargain from the point of he was the one to fail so why should Cas be punished for it. 

“Yes, I’m aware,” Gabriel snapped. “Thanks so much for reminding me that I’m a failure.” Gabriel took a deep breath for calm before he exploded his little brother in his temper. “And that’s the worst part,” he said a bit more steadily. “I could handle losing Sam forever if it had just saved him. If I could have walked away knowing that he would be okay. But he hates me, and it was all for nothing. THAT is what you took away from me. That solace that he would be okay, because he wasn’t. I sacrificed everything, even my life, for you and your cohorts to destroy him anyway.”

Sam couldn’t listen to anymore of this. He stepped into the library and said, “Gabriel, can we talk?” 

Gabriel spun to look at him, eyes wide with shock as his fight or flight instincts warred within him. Gabriel turned to glare at Cas. “You knew he was there,” he accused. 

“I did not,” Cas said honestly. 

“Gabriel?” Sam asked hopefully. 

“I will let you two talk,” Cas said as he walked quickly from the room. 

Gabriel just sighed heavily, seeing that he wasn’t getting out of this, and checked to make sure his masks were firmly in place before leaning lazily against the wall. “Fine. Talk.”

“Why?” Sam simply asked. Too many questions beginning with that word were running through his mind to isolate just one. 

“You’re gonna have to be more specific, Samsquatch. Why what?” Gabriel asked idly.

That brought one to the forefront of his mind. “Why with the act? This whole I don’t care and everything is peachy act you have going on right now.”

“What makes you think it’s an act?” Gabriel asked twirling his lollipop around his fingers. 

“Because it is,” Sam said, only getting an amused look in response. “Okay, so not getting an answer to that one,” Sam guessed, seeing Gabriel smirk at that. “Okay, then why wouldn’t you tell me what all that was about?”

“I did,” Gabriel told him. 

“No, you didn’t,” Sam said confused. He would have remembered that. 

“You can’t save your brother. It only ends in blood and pain. Dean’s your weakness and the bad guys know it. It’s gonna be the death of you. You just gotta let people go. Any of this ringing a bell?” Gabriel asked annoyed. 

“I…but…you…it was all vague. If you had told me exactly what was coming. What I needed to do and avoid…”

“So you expected me, a monster, to tell you not to go after a demon to save your brother’s soul because it would cause Lucifer to be released to possess you and end the world?” Gabriel asked sarcastically. 

“Well…um…when you put it like that…”

“Exactly. I told you as much as I could without making you think I was completely nuts and completely disregard it all anyway,” Gabriel said smugly, glad to be proven right. 

“Okay, but what about later? What about when we knew all that? Why wouldn’t you tell me then? Let me know what you tried to do. WHY you did it?” Sam asked. 

“What was the point?” Gabriel asked. “Why would I brave your wrath just to tell you what you should have already known? It’s not like it makes it better. It’s not like it takes the trauma away.” Gabriel’s masks slipped a little bit at that before he put them back in place. 

“No. You’re right. It doesn’t. But it does make it easier to forgive you for it,” Sam said softly, and Gabriel just scoffed. “I DO forgive you, Gabriel,” Sam said earnestly, just for Gabriel to disappear. Sam sighed. Hopefully Gabriel wouldn’t think he just said that to get him to lay off Cas and Dean. He’d really meant it. He didn’t know where he wanted to go next regarding Gabriel. That would involve a lot of thinking and soul-searching on his part, but he did forgive the archangel at least. 

Sam made his way back to bed, mind turning over the situation as he considered their past interactions with Gabriel, trying to find clues of some sort. At the college when they first met, he could easily recognize the flirting and the way he had seemed so focused on Sam. Mystery Spot too, he seemed completely focused on Sam. But after that it changed. He remembered how Gabriel’s eyes would always track to him, but other than that, his attention stayed on Dean. Like he couldn’t bear to look at him for too long. Every time Sam asked him for something though, he would look at him and completely cave. Now that he was thinking on it, he remembered the concerned longing look that he shot Sam as he was hustling them out the door before he faced Lucifer, and he didn’t realize until that moment that Gabriel went in there knowing full well that he was going to die and did it anyway. Because he loved him. Because he wanted to save him. 

Sam would be lying if he said that he’d never been attracted to Gabriel. How could he not be? The archangel was gorgeous. Before it had just made Sam hate him more, but now…Could he really let something happen there? Could he love Gabriel? He’d just had it proven that he didn’t know Gabriel at all. All he knew were the masks that Gabriel kept up. The act he played, but the archangel was obviously much deeper than that. Did Sam really WANT to know him though? Could he push through the façade and find the real Gabriel? Would it be worth it, or would it just end badly? He still hadn’t come to a conclusion by the time sleep claimed him. 

The next day, he spent most of it lost in thought. He considered what little he did know about Gabriel. Gabriel had run away from heaven to avoid all the anger and fighting. Sam could tell from his whole speech back then that he’d been so lonely. He’d taken up a position as a trickster…as Loki…to keep himself busy and make himself a new family before they turned on him too. As a trickster, he went after people who were irredeemable and destroyed other people’s lives, so he was obviously big on justice, but he always gave them a chance to change whenever possible, like with the frat kid, so he showed mercy too. He knew enough about masks to know that they couldn’t be completely fake, so that meant that he did have that fun-loving, relaxed, easy-going side to him that he just kept pushed to the forefront. Most of all though, he loved Sam. Loved him enough to sacrifice everything, even his own life, in a hopeless attempt to save him. 

Sam had finally come to the conclusion that yes. He wanted to know more. He wanted to know Gabriel, and if that meant navigating a land mine of walls and masks then so be it. It was a good thing he had though because Cas cornered him not long after he made that decision. “Did you not forgive Gabriel?” he asked frustrated. 

Sam couldn’t help the twitch of his lips as he realized that Cas and Dean must have been interrupted again. “I did. Of course, I did. I don’t think he believed me though,” Sam told him apologetically. 

“Then make him believe,” Cas said firmly, striding out of the room.

Sam managed to wait until he was alone before he couldn’t help but laugh. He decided to wait until tonight to call Gabriel. It was best to handle this when Dean was sleeping otherwise he would never hear the end of it. Once the bunker was all quiet, Sam made his way to the library and prayed for Gabriel. He waited for quite a while, but Gabriel never showed up, so he prayed again. He kept praying all night but still no sighting of the archangel. Finally, around sunup, he gave up and went to bed. 

That repeated itself for a few nights, during which Cas and Dean were getting more frustrated with every passing moment, until finally, halfway through Sam’s night of praying, Gabriel showed up. “Geez Samsquatch. You’d think you’d get the hint by now,” he said harshly. “What do you want?” 

Sam knew of only one way to make him stop and listen. He knew he would need to talk to him about it, but first he needed to shock him enough to listen, so he grabbed Gabriel and kissed him soundly. For a moment, Gabriel kissed him back, seeming to lose himself in the act, but then he wrenched himself away. Sam let him, but didn’t let him go far. Not that ‘letting’ him was really the issue. Gabriel could easily break his grip if he wanted to badly enough, but he was counting on that to put him off balance enough to be curious of what Sam had to say. “I DO forgive you, Gabriel,” he said again. “And I don’t know you well. You haven’t given me a chance to know you well, but the little I do know…I want to know more. I want to see what we could have.”

Gabriel narrowed his eyes at Sam, trying to read the truth there. If he was trying to make some grand sacrifice to ensure his brother’s happiness. But he couldn’t find anything beyond open affection. He couldn’t even find the hate hiding beneath the surface anymore. Could he be telling the truth? Could Gabriel really have a chance? There was only one way to be sure. Gabriel took a step forward, Sam’s arms moving from his hips to circle his back once more as he did so, and gave Sam another second to stop him, before he pulled the hunter down for a kiss. When he was paying attention, no one could get one over on him this way. He always knew if their heart wasn’t in it. He was surprised and overjoyed to find that Sam’s was. Sam genuinely wanted to be with him. He had caught the absence of a declaration of love. He got what Sam said when he said he wanted to know him. The real him. It wouldn’t be easy, but he would let Sam in anyway. He was getting everything he ever wanted. He had a chance. Now it was up to him not to screw it up. 

When he pulled out of the kiss a few moments later, he smiled softly at Sam and said, “Okay. But first you need to get some sleep. You look exhausted.”

“Okay. Just…don’t change your mind?” Sam asked hopefully. 

“Not on your life,” Gabriel assured him, and Sam pressed one more soft kiss to his lips before he headed out. 

Sam couldn’t help but smile the next day when Cas and Dean finally managed to disappear together, and sent a silent thank you to Gabriel.


End file.
